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Hi, thought about making a thread about books, not yet out, but are coming soon.

I know John Dickie is currently working on a new book, Blood Brotherhoods, which is a history of all of the organized crime fraternities in Italy, including Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta.

Looking forward to that one...

anything else to look forward to?

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"he began stealing tombstones, then he became a car thief, then an assasin, then a smuggler and then a drug smuggler, then he became a representative of the chamber - a politician....the worst of them all."

IF the premise of this frustrating crime exposé is correct, the April 2006 executions of eight bikers in a barn in Shedden, Ont,. had less to do with greed, stupidity and evil than it had to with few ounces of cocaine that belonged to the Hells Angels.

Whatever happened to that cocaine, no one knows.

Author Alex Caine suggests that the Toronto Bandidos killed on Wayne Kellestine's farm met their maker as part of an elaborately planned scheme by Bandido higher-ups in the U.S. first to placate the powerful Hells Angels for their wayward cocaine, worth about $400,000, and, second, to purge the troublesome Bandidos Toronto chapter.

That cocaine, Caine writes, was found in a trunk of an abandoned car in March 2006. The Oldsmobile was parked on the wrong side of a street in Rexdale and towed to an impound yard. The tow drunk driver was Jamie Flanz, one of the eight to die on Kellestine's farm.

And it was H.A. coke on its way somewhere. But Flanz, a Bandidos prospect, found it before the H.A. could move it. Somehow, some way, the H.A. found out about it and weeks later a plot was hatched not to get the cocaine back, but to slaughter Flanz and seven other guys.

Or so says Caine. He is billed as a Quebec-born, retired contract police agent who penetrated numerous criminal organizations on both sides of the border. This is his second book. The Fat Mexican refers to the Bandido's logo, a pot-bellied bandit wearing a sombrero and holding a pistol and sword.

Give Caine credit for coming up with a theory that makes the Shedden killings more exciting than reading the recent trial coverage. At the trial of the six accused, the Crown said the six killers (three from Winnipeg) were knuckle-dragging sociopaths who only wanted to eliminate the Toronto chapter of the Bandidos so that the fledgling Winnipeg chapter could take over as the main Bandido club in Canada.

The jury agreed and on Oct. 29 convicted each of first-degree murder.

Caine also has a few ideas about star witness M.H., a bouncer at the Zoo in Osborne Village who fell in with the Winnipeg Bandidos and was at Kellestine's farm that murderous night. M.H. was also a police informant, and when he got back to Winnipeg he called his handler, Winnipeg Police Service Const. Tim Diack, right away to blab what he had seen.

Caine theorizes M.H. may have been a double agent. Not only was he working for Diack, but he might have been working for the H.A. too. Sounds like a stretch. From his testimony at trial and comments from others, M.H. doesn't exactly come across as diabolical criminal mastermind.

Diack, a former Winnipeg mayoral candidate, also doesn't fare well in Caine's book. He comes across as a rogue cop.

Caine's research is mostly based on transcripts from the preliminary hearing of the six accused held about two years ago. With the verdicts, testimony from the preliminary hearing, even though not admitted at trial, can be published.

At one point Caine mentions the old Winnipeg Spartans honcho Darwin Sylvester. In June 1998, Caine writes, Sylvester met up with an unnamed Hells Angel and was later found dead in a ditch with his dead driver.

In truth, Sylvester's body has never been found. Word is he was ground up into animal feed.

With Sylvester gone the H.A. took over in Winnipeg. Too bad Caine missed that. It shows the Winnipeg Bandidos likely never stood a chance, even without the bloodshed at Shedden.

On the morning of April 8, 2006, residents of the hamlet of Shedden, Ontario, woke up to the news that the bloodied bodies of eight bikers from the Bandidos gang had been found dead on a local farm. The massacre made headlines around the world, and the shocking news brought a grim light to an otherwise quiet corner of the province. Six Bandidos would eventually be convicted of the first-degree murder of their biker brothers.

Like other outlaw bikers, Bandidos portray themselves as motorcycle enthusiasts who are systematically misunderstood and abused by the police, as well as feared by the public. We now know the Bandidos were anything but simple motorcycle enthusiasts. However, unlike such biker gangs as the Hell's Angels, who run sophisticated operations, the Bandidos were highly disorganized, prone to petty infighting and even engaged in sabotaging fellow members. This is the story of how the Bandidos self-destructed over one dark night.

As gripping as any crime novel, The Bandido Massacre takes us inside a crumbling brotherhood bent on betrayal and self-obliteration.

Will be out later this year. Will be very interesting to see, how much there is in the boook about Outlaws mc, which we haven't read about before. But why is it called the 60 years war? I would say Outlaws and HA have been after each other on and off for around 50 years.

Showdown: How the Outlaws, Hells Angels and Cops Fought for Control of the Streets (Paperback)

by Jerry Langton (Author)

Product Description

The 1970s. Two ambitious bikers come out of the same tough neighborhood of Hamilton, Ontario. Two biker gangs want to exploit the lucrative drug, prostitution, and vice rackets in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe. This is the improbable story of Mario "the Wop" Parente and Walter Stadnick who respectively become the national presidents of the Outlaws and Hells Angels--and sworn enemies.

The Outlaws are an American biker gang who assume power when Satan's Choice falls into disarray. They take a headlock on the distribution of drugs, the supply of prostitutes to strip clubs, and extortion and graft. Their leader is a big, violent man named Mario Parente.

Hells Angels have expanded into Quebec and are rapidly exterminating rival biker gangs. They wage a war against the Rock Machine and open up another front in Ontario against the Outlaws. The incursion is the work of 5-foot 4-inch Walter Stadnick, the Angels strategist, who envisions the Hells Angels doing business across Canada. Stadnick will have his hands full with a biker from his hometown, Mario Parente, who is gearing up to protect the Southwest Ontario turf he has fought so hard to acquire by rebuilding Satan's Choice and a partnership with the Para-dice Riders, and be establishing a puppet club, the Black Pistons.

The police and the public have no stomach for an all-out biker war. The Hamilton cops, OPP and Surete de Quebec combine forces to launch Project Retire and bring down the Outlaws, a sweep that has unintended outcomes for the balance of biker power in Ontario.

Ask an American and they’ll tell you that Canada is a country filled with overly polite hockey players and hasn’t experienced a crime more serious than jay-walking in a dog’s age.

It’s the kind of stereotype that those of us born and raised in the Great White North, well… kind of embrace.

Like all stereotypes, however, there’s a grain of truth to it—but there’s also a grain of bullshit. While Canada is, compared to our neighbours to the south, a relatively safe country, there is a dark and seedy side to it, filled with enough rapes, drug deals and murders to keep Martin Scorsese occupied for the next century.

In Showdown: How the Outlaws, Hells Angels and Cops Fought for Control of the Streets, Jerry Langton profiles the groups that were most prolific in the ol’ Canadian era of ultra-violence in the second half of the 20th century: outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Langton describes the rise of biker gangs in excruciating detail, delving deep into the founding and evolution of well-known groups like the Hells Angels, Outlaws and Bandidos, as well as minor players like Satan’s Choice, the Rockers, the Mongols, the Loners and their ilk.

Although Quebec’s biker war—which raged furiously between 1994 and 2002 and claimed over 100 lives—has long been the focus of the media’s attention when it comes to the gangs, Langton instead concentrates on the bloody battle for Ontario. It’s compelling stuff, filled with colourful characters such as former Hells Angels national president Walter Stadnick and Outlaws president Mario “Mike” Parente, who Langton managed to interview for the book.

Centered around Stadnick and Parente’s hometown of Hamilton, Showdown is a vivid and comprehensive account of the politics, partying and personalities that made up a bloody chapter of Canadian history. The book’s major weakness is that Langton’s attention to detail goes way beyond being informative and well into anal-retentive territory. Chronologies of some of the biker gangs, even small ones who are not integral to the story being told, can read like a biblical family tree—“The Phantom Riders begat Satan’s Choice who begat Hells Angels, and lo, much cocaine was sold throughout the land.” The sheer number of people mentioned in the book often makes it hard to know who is fighting whom. Showdown may have been a more streamlined read had Langton focused more on a few key players, as he did in Fallen Angel, his biography of former Hells Angels leader Stadnick.

When Langton focuses on a few of the many colourful characters, Showdown bristles with the same restless energy that fuels these outlaw gangs—one scene in particular, in which eight members of the Bandidos are murdered one by one by a fellow Bandido, is absolutely chilling, in large part because of Langton’s matter-of-fact prose.

Thanks to extensive research and firsthand interviews with the proverbial cops and robbers, Showdown is as complete a tome as you can expect to find on Ontario’s biker battles. Though at times perhaps too complete, it’s a stark reminder that behind Canada’s tranquil veneer, we breed Mom Bouchers as well as Wayne Gretzkys.

Product DescriptionEveryone's heard of the Hell's Angels but the Outlaws Motorcycle Club is a band of brothers like no other. Hidden away from mainstream society behind multiple layers of secrecy, mythology and a campaign of misinformation that portrays them as loveable rogues, the day-to-day realities of life within this world have been kept out of the public arena. Until now.

Outlaws is a compelling, shocking and chilling inside story that will change the way you look at biker gangs forever.

About the AuthorTony Thompson is the bestselling author of Gangland Britain and Gangs, and is widely regarded as one of Britain`s top true-crime writers. He has twice been nominated for the prestigious Crime Writer`s Association Gold Dagger for Non-fiction, winning the coveted title in 2001 for his book The Infiltrators. He is the former crime correspondent for the Observer and appears regularly on both television and radio as an expert on matters of crime.

"he began stealing tombstones, then he became a car thief, then an assasin, then a smuggler and then a drug smuggler, then he became a representative of the chamber - a politician....the worst of them all."

Don't, whatever you do, call them badges. And please don't confuse MCC's with MC's, or it will get nasty...

Bikers can be found riding en masse in every city on every continent. Often they are drawn together because they are fans of a particular make or model of machine, or because they live in a certain area, but more often than not they bond simply through the sheer joy of riding. Many such clubs identify themselves with ‘patches’ or ‘colours’ sewn onto their jackets, but what untrained eyes see as random choices over positions and designs are actually the result of delicate and lengthy negotiations within the complex world of biker politics.

The majority of organised bikers belong to MCCs – Motor Cycle Clubs – and wear their patches on the front or side of their jackets. Joining such a club is easy and requires little in the way of ongoing commitment. Patches are available for purchase by anyone who turns up to a rally or meeting and the main goal of the club is to enhance the social life of its members.

At the other end of the scale are the MCs – Motorcycle Clubs. The absence of that one letter makes a world of difference. An MC is about more than brotherhood, more than camaraderie; it is less a club, more a way of life. MC patches cannot be bought, only earned, a process that can take many years. To be accepted by an MC you have to be prepared to give up everything and anything and make the good of the club your number one priority.

MC members wear a three part-back patch, sometimes sewn directly onto a jacket but usually on a leather or denim cut-off. The club name appears at the top on a curved bar known as a rocker. The club colours are in the centre while a bottom rocker will name the territory. Prospective members wear only the bottom rocker as a mark of their reduced status.

The major MCs also sport a diamond shaped patch with ‘1%’ inside on the front of their colours. This originates from a massive drunken riot that followed a 1947 drag race meeting attended by thousands of bikers in the small town of Hollister, California. In the aftermath the organisers, the American Motorcycle Association, said the trouble had been caused by a small minority and that ninety-nine per cent of those who attended had been well behaved. The riot went on to inspire the Marlon Brando film ‘The Wild One’ and MC gangs have called themselves ‘one percenters’ ever since.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of a set of patches to an MC member. They are his most prized possession and the loss of them under almost any circumstances is an unbearable disgrace. Patches are absolutely sacred and it is no exaggeration to say that MC members consider them worth fighting for and, if necessary, dying for.

With painfully few exceptions – such as when two new clubs emerge from an unclaimed area at roughly the same time – no new MC will ever wear a bottom rocker laying claim to an occupied area unless they are prepared to declare outright war on the current incumbents.

(When the Mongols MC launched in the early 1970s, their members wore a ‘California’ bottom rocker much to the annoyance of the Hell’s Angels who not only dominated the west coast state but also considered it sacred: the gang had been founded there in the aftermath of World War Two. The Angels warned the Mongols to remove the rocker. The Mongols, composed mostly of Hispanics who had been refused entry to the HA on account of their race, stood their ground. It took 17 years and dozens of murders on both sides before the Angels eventually agreed to a compromise.)

The 1% MC gangs not only control their territory but also, to some or other degree, oversee the activities of all other biker clubs within their area. Nothing happens without their say so and any potential threat to their superiority, no matter how small, is dealt with harshly.

If you have any doubts that this is indeed the case, I suggest you try the following experiment: gather together a group of male friends (women are generally not allowed to join back patch clubs), equip yourselves with large motorcycles – ideally Harley Davidson’s – and choose a club logo. Stitch your colours to the back of a leather jacket with the name of your club above and the name of your county or state below.

Hold elections to appoint a President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer and Sergeant-At-Arms (responsible for club discipline) then go out riding as a group and get yourselves seen by as many people as possible.

Far more likely, however, is that you and your friends will be stomped and beaten and chain whipped to a pulp, your patches and possibly even your bikes will be confiscated. Your arms or legs will be broken

Within days, possibly within hours, you and your friends will be intercepted by the massed ranks of whichever MC club is dominant in your area. If you are lucky and show sufficient reverence – that is, if they feel you can drink and party and fight and fuck with the best of them – they will invite you to a meeting at their clubhouse, explain the error of your ways, request that you stop wearing your patches (or charge you a hefty weekly fee in return for permission to wear an altered version) and then lay out the rules for your future conduct.

Far more likely, however, is that you and your friends will be stomped and beaten and chain whipped to a pulp, your patches and possibly even your bikes will be confiscated. Your arms or legs will be broken (to prevent you riding) and you will be told in no uncertain terms that your little club no longer exists. Period. The patches will be burned and the bikes stripped down for spares or resold. And if you even consider going to the police, you’ll just make an enemy of every other MC in the world and instantly prove that you didn’t have what it takes to make it in the scene anyway.

This scenario becomes even more certain if the dominant club in your area is one of the big three international gangs: the Hell’s Angels, the Outlaws or the Bandidos, or if you attempt to use a ‘protected’ colour combination: red on white for the Angels, black on white for the Outlaws, red on yellow for the Bandidos. Copying the designs of one of the big gangs would bring even more trouble – all three are trademarked and protected by international copyright law.

The issue of showing appropriate respect to an MC applies even when it is crystal clear that the other club is in no way any kind of a threat. In August 2010 a sixty-three-year-old bike-riding preacher from Altoona, Pennsylvania was beaten and robbed by members of the Animals MC after failing to seek permission to wear a back patch which featured a red cross on a white background along with the words: ‘Shield of Faith Ministries’.

In the UK the Brothers of the Third Wheel (BTW) go to great pains to point out that they are an association, not a club, for trike riders. They have many female members, revel in a family atmosphere and have never been involved in any form of conflict. Following careful negotiations their members are allowed to wear a symbol on their backs because the 1% clubs have designated it a badge, not a patch. Despite this the Hell’s Angels have forbidden BTW members from wearing their badges anywhere in Kent.

Such rules exist because an MC has to be seen to be the dominant club in the area it controls and the best way to do this is to ensure that no other club ever wears their colours there without permission. When clubs fail to follow this rule, wars start and all too quickly escalate out of control.

‘Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs’ by Tony Thompson is published by Hodder & Stoughton at £12.99

Over 50 years ago, the term one percenter was coined by the AMA who said that 99 percent of motorcycle enthusiasts are good law-abiding citizens, which leaves one percent.

That one percent made is up of motorcycle clubs such as the Hells Angels that were full of outlaws, hardened criminals, ex-cons, murderers, drug dealers and some bikers who sought out brotherhood.

"Terry the Tramp: The Life and Dangerous Times of a One Percenter" takes you into the back alleys, biker bars, secret hideouts and the back room deals of the one percenter lifestyle. Terry "the Tramp" Orendorff was the notorious leader of the one percenters, becoming the International President of the Vagos Motorcycle Club for 26 years.

Terry the Tramp takes you through Terry's childhood from a broken home with an absentee father, where his mother struggled to bring him up in poverty. Terry got most of his education on the streets of Alhambra, Calif., where he developed a vicious chip on his should for having the terrible luck of being born on the wrong side of the tracks.

He learned the lessons of the street well and they took him all the way to the top leadership position of the national Vagos Motorcycle Gang. He controlled one of the most violent, extremely powerful group of outlaws and hardened criminals in motorcycle history for two-and-a-half decades.

Not satisfied with being confined to Los Angeles, Terry expanded the power and influence of Vagos into Wyoming, Hawaii, Oregon, Nevada and Japan. He guided his brothers through the pot smoke of the hippie era, the needless violence precipitated by the use of reds in the '70s and the gangster era of cocaine and speed in the '80s.

Terry managed Vagos through turbulent and deadly club wars with other clubs. The Vagos Club itself was rife with internal conflict as various members vied for more power, violated honor codes and reacted with horrific acts of retribution and revenge.

After 42 years of loyal allegiance to Vagos and his brotherhood, that same brotherhood staged a coup and Terry was ousted from his role as President. Ironically, Terry was also brought up on charges and jailed, not for his involvement and activity of as the International President of the Vagos, but for a white-collar crime.

Each page of "Terry the Tramp: The Life and Dangerous Times of a One Percenter" takes the reader on the ride of his life, on a rough ride through the dark and seedy side of biker history - the characters, the bikes, the women and the men who lived the story and those who died trying. This is the ultimate look inside the life of the one percenter.

Author, Keith "Bandit" Randall Ball, was the founding editor of Easy Rider Magazine and has been publishing motorcycle magazines for 40 years. He currently publishes Bikernet.com, the most popular biker magazine on the Internet. Ball has written four motorcycle novels and two nonfiction motorcycle books to date. Ball is a former member of a 1% Motorcycle Club in good standing.

I have now read Outlaws by Tony Thompson, and all in all, the book is ok. Some parts of the book are good, like the ones about the UK and Ireland MC scene, other parts are very much so and so, like the chapter about the war in Scandinavia. If Thompson had used David’s site there would not be the mistakes there are. Other parts again are all most taken word for word from a book by Lavigne. But let me say, if a reader knows nothing about the UK/Ireland mc scene, the book is a must. But if the reader knows a bit, like me, then the reader might wonder about the following: exactly which paramilitary group kicked Hells Angels out of Ireland in 1990, as the book says? HA had two chapters in Ireland back in the second half of the 80’es, one in the Republic and another in Northern Ireland, but Thompson doesn’t write the name of the group which supposedly closed down their chapters. And who is the Canadian Outlaw mc member who supposedly singlehanded killed a lot of Canadian HA members during the HA versus Outlaws war in Quebec? And why wasn’t “Snake Dog”, the person who told Thompson his life story as an outlaw biker (and by the way, according to the beginning of the book, is a career criminal who managed to stay out of prison most of the time), not allowed to leave his club (in the book he says he is not allowed because he knows too much)?. And why do they join the AOA? There is no real explanation, the book has nothing about the politics of the clubs and how the AOA is organized. That little there is, is what has been in the UK news. At the end of the book I was sitting with a lot of unanswered questions. And one last thing, the book was named “Outlaws Inside the violent world of biker gangs”, but the paperback edition’s title is “Outlaws Inside the Hell’s Angels biker wars”. Is that because everybody has heard about the HA, but not about the Outlaws?